Natural Sweeteners

There is a lot of information about natural sweeteners out there, how do you know what is best? This is what I've learned, and these are the sweeteners I use the most. Always try to buy the best quality that you can, I've found that Wholesome Sweeteners brand is probably the best generally available brand out there for many of these.

Raw Honey - Has many health & healing benefits, including digestive enzymes. If you buy local honey, it can have a homeopathic effect in helping to reduce allergies (meaning you're eating little bits of what you're allergic to and calms the allergy.) If you find a local source, it's reasonably priced in bulk. It tastes good, but you also have adjust your recipe (adding in more dry ingredients) when using it in baking. And it can make some things taste too much like honey.

Sucanat - Sucanat is unrefined dried cane sugar juice, and stands for SUgar CAne NATural. The molasses has not been removed like in regular table sugar. It has less sucrose than white sugar. It has a definite molasses taste and can easily be substituted for brown sugar in recipes. However, if you don't want your finished product to taste like molasses, then don't substitute directly for sugar. It is not cheap, which is good because then you can limit it's use as it should be. Be sure to buy good quality sucanat, as some is simply regular sugar with molasses added back in. I buy Wholesome Sweeteners brand, and it costs about $2-$3 per pound at the health food store, or if you buy it in bulk it's about $75 for a 50lb bag which lasts our family of 7 the whole year.

Stevia - Stevia hasn't been approved by the FDA as a food, but as a dietary sweetener. It's an herb that's derived from a plant grown in South America, where it's been used for 1500 years. It is 300 times sweeter than sugar, but it is very low on the glycemic index, which means it doesn't spike your blood sugar and is perfect for diabetics. There are varying qualities on this product too, of course. You can purchase the green leaf which is less refined, but quite frankly tastes rather terrible (perhaps I got some poor quality stevia or something, but it makes your food taste like sweet herbs). I much prefer the white powder, and I purchase Sweet Leaf Stevia Extract for about $9 for 1 oz, which sounds incredibly expensive, but it goes a loooong way. It can leave an aftertaste, so I sometimes use a little of another natural sweetener to counteract that. It is much better to add to foods already cooked or raw such as fruit shakes, puddings, yogurt, etc rather than to try to bake with stevia.

Agave Nectar - One of the newest sweeteners to appear on the health food scene, it's best features are low glycemic index and a very mild taste! Moderately pricey at $35 a gallon, but worth it. It's 3 times sweeter than sugar. Agave nectar comes from agave plants, mainly grown in mexico. Interestingly, tequila is made from agave plants too (although I don't recommend using tequila!)

Maple Syrup - Buy real maple syrup, not flavored maple syrup like Mrs. Butterworth's. Grade A is what you'll find in most stores, but grade B has more nutrition. Grade A is more highly filtered, thus removing many of the valuable minerals. Organic maple syrup is preferable because they don't use formaldahyde in the processing. Maple syrup isn't cheap, 1/2 gallon of grade A syrup costs $18 - $20 at Costco (sometimes they even have organic), and grade B can cost upwards of $40-$50 for 1/2 gallon.

Molasses - Buy organic unrefined blackstrap molasses for best nutrition (great source of b vitamins and iron.) I like the taste of the molasses from Wholesome Sweeteners the best.

Real Vanilla Extract - while not a sweetener, you can often cut back on adding other sweeteners simply by adding vanilla!